credentials are
questioned bears this out.

As everything has two sides, the Herald experiment (if
one could call it that) too had its pros and cons. The
single most significant achievement of Herald, in my
opinion, was to raise a breed of bright young
journalists who cut their teeth in journalism there.
Most of them left disillusioned and bitter with the
paper and its Editor, but they have done reasonably
well elsewhere. But for Herald, they would not have
come to this field.

And Herald did manage to provide some relief (comic
relief, according to critics) from the tedious fare
offered by the NT. It was sharp and pungent -- too
pungent for many. Almost every report packed a sting in
its tail. Some of the fare dished out in the guise of
investigative journalism was just gossip laced with
outrageous bias. But all this lighted the scene up and
served as a reminder to the NT to wake up and take notice.

Rajan Narayan never hesitated to name his rivals,
especially the NT, while making disparaging remarks.
The NT, on the other hand, took a diametrically
opposite stance: it skirted controversies altogether.
Its unwritten policy was never to report or comment on
anything controversial, let alone naming names!

But that had to change to keep pace with the changing
times. I lampooned Rajan Narayan in my columns
occasionally, which Mudaliar permitted reluctantly. It
must be said to Rajan Narayan's credit that he not only
took my pot-shots in good humour, but, according to
Herald sources, also stopped a couple of juniors who
wanted to hit back at me.

I met Rajan Narayan only once; but then it was hardly a
meeting. Rather, I saw him from a distance at a
midnight carnival in Panjim. After the edition was
over, my NT colleague Anthony and I decided to take a
round. We saw Rajan Narayan surrounded by a group of
revellers. In a red T-shirt and bermudas, with a red
ribbon around his head and a glass of feni in hand, a
wobbly Rajan Narayan with bleary eyes was quite a
spectacle. Anthony nudged me and asked, "Can you
imagine Mudaliar in such a scene?"

Never. Mudaliar was, by comparison, dapper. In fact,
his first advice to me when I called on him for a job
interview was to be always mindful of my reputation.
"It's a small place. Everybody knows everybody. And
liquor is cheap here," he had said.

I left Goa rather bitterly.

I fell out with Mudaliar over an innocuous remark in my
column. I used to report the traditi